Originally posted by CasanoVa
!!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!
AVENGERS: THE INTIATIVE
The first issue of Dan Slott's new series and I must say: It starts off with a bang. Dan Slott has become somewhat of a forum legend to be honest, outside of the internet he isn't much respected, but his runs on She Hulk, The Thing and Arkham Asylum showed his diversity as a writer, not only for comedy but for dark gritty stories, which the Intiative is as we find out near the end. It starts off with The Gaunlet, the loud mouthed, rude "mother-loving" drill sergeant role made famous in movies such as Full Metal Jacket, Peter Gyrich persuades him to train all of the new super-heroes coming out of America.. And he reluctantly obliges. It quickly shoots on to the "young" character of the intiative, Cloud 9.. a rather small insecure normal girl flying around the air who is quickly hailed down by War Machine and signed up for the intiative, she becomes one of my favourites (She works, whereas I despise Molly in runaways) in the title, even realising all the other women have perfect bodies and the awkward moment between her and MVP. MVP is an athlete as his name implies, who because his grandather created the super soldier serum is stripped of his medals despite the fact no traces of the SSS were found in him, he gets off to a great start and sets the course record for non-speeders, definetly appearing to be the "big man on campus".
Then as the truck load of new members of the Intiative shows up, Slott takes to mind the fact not everyone agree's with it and they are bombarded by protestors. As they pull up a newly over-confident dickish Hank Pym steps onto the bus and tells that what for, I must admit personally I find Dan Slott's version of Yellow Jacket alot better than he was portrayed before, I prefer Yellow Jacket being an arrogant dick than an insecure dweeb. That's something this title as of yet has been great with, reworking old characters.. Dan Slott is a master with continuity, showing old characters such as: Bengal, Slapstick, Stingray, Hellcat, Scorpion, Red Wolf, Constrictor and more who would never make it into an ongoing normally. He revitalises them, which I personally am very glad at, especially as he actually remembers Vance Astrovik aka Justice was the leader of the New Warriors once, having him go so far as to complain when Gaunlet uses them to belitte the students and insult them.
Another impressive thing is that he actually knows how the law works, where other writers say heroes have to unmask themselves publically he understands that only Tony Stark has to know their secret identity, which he attempts to drill into them through Gauntlet at several points through the issue. The FAR most interesting moment of the issue is definetly the ending though, the intiative trainees are in the battle simulator: Armory (has a weapon that morphs for whatever purpose she needs) is destroying the robots and showing off. Trauma ("Emo Boy"
is called into the room and is told to destroy the robots, he says he needs somebody in the room to use his powers and Armory is told to stay with him. He reaches inside her and see's that her fear is spiders, she's an arachnaphobe (his powers being to physically turn into somebodies greatest fears), he transforms into a giant spider and Armory flips out firing madly around and blasting off Komodo's arm (a young lady who stole Curt Connor's lizard serum). Cloud 9 freezes up and MVP manages to tackle her out of the way of a blast, but is quickly hit in the head with a blast killing him on the spot.
An enraged Peter Gyrich shouts that nothing happened, nobody died and nothing leaves the room, something oh so in character for him, having him cover up the entire thing. Armory is stripped of her weapon and marched off the base, the last page has Rage asking what happened and Trauma saying "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
I give this book a 10/10, it gets off to a perfect start, Dan Slott really shows his prowess as a writer as he makes you care for all of the characters he's taken merely 26 pages to flesh out, he even has the guts to kill probably the most likeable character of them all off in the first issue. It shows that working in the super-hero business is not easy and not safe either, The book manages to feel light hearted at the start and slowly feels dark and gritty by the end of it. He brings back characters such as Vance Astrovik & War Machine and manages to get the characterization spot on.
I'll repeat it, 10/10. IMO Dan Slott is definetly the best writer at Marvel right now, if you haven't bought this or read the scans over in the "Civil War Scans" thread I advise you to do so.
End of Review/Synopsis can i comment and say i agree...
but the whole ending thing hit me hard...i mean, i already had imagined C9 and MVP hitting it off so well and then BAM! most litrally...but goood book
edit: and Trauma may be one of my new Fav supers.
Trauma is bloody awesome, he was definetly my favourite character out of all of them (including MVP) lol yeah, i just added that in, he's def. going to be transfered to Thunderbolts tho, i can see it already.
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